Charger Muscle Car: Examining the Pros and Cons

January 27, 2012

The Dodge Charger muscle car remains one of the most popular and successful selling vehicles of its type in history. This vehicle is an attractively designed and emblematic icon, representing an entire generation of cars and highly collectible. Dodge Chargers today, like Dodge Challengers and a few other models of muscle car from the early 1960s through the mid 1970s, are quite expensive. They still stand up to the highest performing vehicles on the market at this point in terms of overall engine capabilities, acceleration power and top speed. However, there are a few downsides to the Dodge Charger as well. Read on for a comparison of the pros and cons of this iconic vehicle.

Pros for the Dodge Charger

The Dodge Charger was released 2 years after the initial muscle cars (the GTO by Pontiac and a few other similar models). In the intervening period, Dodge had developed the capability of producing more powerful and faster vehicles than those already on the market, but had failed to come up with a good and attractive design. The Charger was Dodge's first foray into muscle car design, and the results were received exceedingly well. Thus, the Charger provides a great design and body type unique amongst other muscle cars of its type, as well as a higher performing engine than many other muscle cars too.

The second generation of Dodge Chargers, beginning in 1968, feature a distinctive design as well. This is the iconic Charger model and has come to be synonymous with muscle cars at this point in time. A second major advantage to the Dodge Charger is the introduction of the "R/T" concept at this time. Signifying "road/track," cars with the R/T designation were designed to be even more powerful than other performance vehicles, sporting the very latest in engine technology. Dodge firmly solidified its place as a muscle car developer with R/T vehicles.

Cons for the Dodge Charger

There are a couple of reasons why the Dodge Charger ended up being outperformed in many years by the Ford muscle cars it competed against. The first is the exceptionally wide mouth and grill at the front of the vehicle. This caused a good amount of drag and prevented the vehicle from being able to turn as quickly as other cars.

A second disadvantage to the Charger in comparison with other muscle cars is the design of the rear window. The window was designed to be tunneled for appearance effect, but engineers found that models up through 1969 experienced severe drag due to these window designs. Subsequently, designers changed both of these two elements of the car to help reduce drag and allow the Charger to perform at its highest level. Still, many of the most productive years for the Charger were marred by these minor design flaws.